What a cost...

Taxi ride from KLIA to Ritz Carlton was MYR94.00 (CAD30.00). The trip took about an hour. We passed thru 4 tolls and the taxi driver paid for them. Maybe the taxi ride cost included the tolls. It ranged from MYR0.8 to MYR1.5. Removing the toll costs of about MYR10.00; it was down to 84.00. Assuming there was a fee for booking that the taxi driver had to pay, let say MYR10.00. We are now down to MYR74.00 (CAD24.00). Wear and tear, gas for the vehicle, maybe another MYR10.00. So the net profit goes down to MYR64.00; then all the other fees that I do not know. Say another MYR10.00. The net profit is down to MYR54.00.

One hour going to hotel and then returning trip back to airport empty. Man... Hourly earning is MYR27.00. That's CAD 8.59 an hour!

Freak

Can you believe in order to do overseas transfer online from HSBC, you have to apply!!! Every six months!!! And it takes 2 working days to get it setup again!! Worst, the website does not tell you as you select the option. It tells you after you fill in a cryptic form with not enough room to fill in information. After you click the "Confirm" button two screens later, the site finally tells you cannot send in a HK banking version of Chinese style English in a paragraph form! If you glance fast, it seems telling you your account is zero balance and cannot do the transfer!!!! Bloody hell. Took me 3 tries and 1/2 hour later to figure that out!

Another Mobile Number

Yes, got a Malaysian mobile number. Beat paying Rogers for CAD 1.00 for SMS messages plus roaming charges. It only costs me 20 cents Ringgits (CAD 0.06) to sent International SMS messages. Gee... I wonder which one I will use. Dah....

I bought a little card holder to hold all my SIM cards from different countries. It has five slots. I have used them up plus one in my Nokia and one in my iPhone.

I can't use my unlocked iPhone here with this Malaysian SIM Card. It has some custom configuration issues with my iPhone. I end up putting the SIM in my Nokia. And within seconds, things started flowing. The SIM card automatically received custom modules for the pre-paid SIM like MMS, WAP and Music store. Right. I only need a bloody phone to send and receive SMSs and Calling people. For 38.8 Ringgits I am not complaining. Of course when I bought the pre-paid phone card, I had to "surrender" my passport for activation.

Seemed the people at the mobile shop did not know there would be problem with my iPhone sending SMSs. So as an IT guy, I ended up figuring out myself. I wasted time yet again today figuring somebody's else problem! I had to ended up plugging it into my Nokia. I thought I have said that earlier!

Starhill Gallery

Next to the Ritz in a joining complex is a high-end and I mean high-end luxury mall called Starhill Gallery. In that mall houses the most exclusive retail names. There were more security guards than I have seen for a while; last was in Sandton City in Jo'berg in South Africa. There was a watch shop last night we passed by had security guards with shotguns!

Malaysian Airline

Again, must be the Malaysian attitude. You get something very good and then something just go "Huh, how dumb are you?"

I was on Malaysian Airlines website to book our tickets yesterday for KL, Malaysia from Shanghai. Due to the C0Mm!e blocking portion of an airline booking site, I had to do that from deep in the middle of North America remotely. Got one ticket done. Then I had trouble booking mine! Good thing I did iron-wife's first!!!!

From the Malaysian Airlines website, it clearly said "Book now, fly tomorrow". No so true! You have to be at least 24 hours before you can book an economy class seat rate!!!! I finally figured that out after much clicking from different entry points and a lot of 4-letter word expression. If I were to get one from the airline website, I had to either change the date to more than 24 hours away or select "Economy +" class. If I were to do the latter, my airfare on a one-way would have been CNY500 less than the return ticket I just bought for iron-wife. Yeah right. I called our trusty travel agent. 10 minutes later, I got a seat for CNY 3,010.00 return. Gee....

O yeah, the site also did not let you enter a first name too long. How good is that? Specially when the ticket issued to has to match up to the passport name 100%. Stupid!

Flight was good, service was excellent! Lots of knee rooms. But the inflight entertainment sucked! It was like the old days of flying, no personal entertainment system. Just one small screen in front to watch whatever movie scheduled. Agh.... 5 hours!!!!

During this 5-hour flight, we hit turbulent for 4 hours! Sick bags everywhere.

O yeah, we had to fill out a health form. And the flight attendants had both health form and landing card but they only give out landing cards. The health form, they just carry around up and down rolled up so I had no idea what it was. Then when landed. We like so many coming off planes had to do an end run to a table with tourists trying to fill the forms out. And the bloody so called "first defense against the Swine Flu", didn't even look at the form but put it into a box. What the...

Maybe I have reached the magic number of 40 that caused all the pickiness in me. Who knows.

Great food!

Dinner tonight was Thai, at a restaurant called Bangkok Jazz. Here are the pictures of the food we ordered tonight.

Appertizer, batel leaf wrap; go to Moose Jaw's Thai restaurant and you can sample


Main course dishes, garlic veggie and spicy tofu


Green curry, the flavour, we could taste all the different spices in our mouth


Dessert: sticky rice, mango and coconut sauce

Ritz Carlton, KL

The service quality I expected just went down the bloody toilet. Called for a power adapter and after 45 minutes, no one delivered. I had to called. Another 20 minutes went by, finally someone appeared with one. Wrong one!!! Or someone just had no brains when ordering the power adapters for the hotel. There is NO, repeat NO US plugs on those multiple adapters given to us! Can you believe that? One of the phones not working. OK, OK, so I paid a total of USD 30.00 upgraded to a club lounge suite with a nook that I could work. But stuff around here just not up to the fine quality standard. Mandarin Oriental across the street next to KLCC was much better!

Granted though, I have to say the front desk staff and the lobby staff were all extremely friendly and helpful.

Ah... my faith has just been restored. Our private butler has used her brain to come up with a solution for me!!! Phew....

Mask, mask everywhere

At airport. And before I landed in Shanghai Friday night, the flight attendant took everyone's temperature. Because we came from Macau so the alert is NOT too high. As I went got close to the Immigration Hall at Pudong airport, I saw staff with full gown as the last firewall for the Swine Flu.

When we went to Shenzen from Hong Kong Ferry Terminal, the ferry staff took our temperature before letting us on the ferry; then when we docked at Shekou port in Shenzen, the medical staff came on the ferry to take our temperature again. HK, Macau, China, we all had to fill out a Health Form. This was similar to post-SARS.

Site blocked....

The c0mM!e$ has blocked this site. I notice it when we were in Shenzen last weekend. Maybe want to control a bit of the flu news; don't want people to spread rumours. O well...

Good thing they have not blocked the Twitter I have. At least short quick messages can get out.

Yummy fruit

Guess what this is?



It's Loquat (pi pa in Chinese), a very nice sweet juicy fruit. There are two types. The first type is more yellowish and tear drop shape. This second type is lighter yellowish and smaller. But this second type is more delicate. It originates from Shandong province just SouthWest of here.

Sooo good. We also had Chinese Bayberry with HagenDez Vanilla ice-cream.. Available only this month! I meant the fruits not the ice-cream.

O yeah, juicy Lychee with very small seeds. Next, Durians in Penang this weekend!

Brains?

Not that I am bitching but this client, a multi-national resource company, "requested" all external consultants to take a 30% cut in fee due to the "black liquid" pricing has dropped compared to last year. Right, 30%. But this is the hotel that will host next week's course. Granted the Internet rate is about USD 150 per night. But the image coming across does not spread the message of cost saving.

http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/KualaLumpur/Default.htm

Crap

Imagine you woke up and then had to stare into this thing across from your balcony! I used to be able to see the sea and now this crap! Worse part is not me, it's the residents living across from this. They thought they had a sea view. But now bombarded with neo lights. Do you think you can sleep? Not to mention bad Fung Shui!

Welcome to the early 2000's unrestricted gambling development here as well as the C0RRupt!0n.

This is the new Grand Lisboa owned by $t@nley h0.

Rain!

Have you seen such heavy rain? Taken from balcony at our apartment at 5:50pm.

Kylin Vila, Shenzhen

What a beautiful place! Yesterday morning at 6am, as we stepped out of the main entrance of the hotel, we were greeted by gingery aroma. It was from a ginger trees planted not far away. As we ran in a circular route around the complex, our senses were bombarded with different aromas from various trees. My lungs were cleared. My nostrils were delighted not breathing in carbon exhausted air. Wow, was all we could say. Never experienced that before with different aromatic scent at different section of the walk path.

Here are pictures from our room balcony overlooking the 50M pool.

Anyone?

Was checking out the facility that Cathay Pacific had invited me for a free golf outing. On the resort website, this is what I saw on a page. Anyone? Group bondage? Ummm...

Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC)

Just installed it on my old Macbook Pro using Parallel's virtualization. I think it is my old Macbook Pro's memory. Not enough to run OS X and Windows 7 side by side. Things are a bit slower. O well, I have free use of this Windows 7 RC for a year so why not. Plus when I run Windows, I don't do anything on OS X anyway. One interesting thing, I cannot extend the harddrive space. It is fixed at 32G. Maybe not so free. But my first Windows 7 Beta, I could do that.

I am exploring some of the settings to customize resolution, and other related Display settings. Wow... So complex... Makes XP looks simplier and of course, no comparison with the OS X's nicest user interface. Apparently, Microsoft did not consult any outside consultation on user interface. Umm.... More reports later.

A beautiful coffee break

Sunday afternoon. We were looking for a nice coffee shop to sit and relax with Chairman Lo. Iron-wife thought of a place as we were heading out. See the pictures here. This is the alley leading up to an old Portuguese style house. It has transformed into a gov't run art gallery. Trees, shades, and little tables out on the patio. People were doing their water colour drawings. The breeze was cool. Quiet. Sunny. Humidity about 65%. Perfect! The coffee came to MOP 30.00 (CAD 4.00) in total for the three of us. Strong freshly brewed coffee. The price and atmosphere were right. If we were to head somewhere else for afternoon coffee, it would have cost us MOP 30.00 per person. So nice...

Big news in Shanghai

1) Pudong district is where the world famous tall buildings are; and this district is huge where most foreigners live in big complexes. Now, the NanHui district just south of that, has been approved by the Central gov't to merge with Pudong district. This will have a combined population of about 1 millions. Speculation has called that part of another district in the neighboring province will have to merge as well. Yikes. Shanghai is getting big! Overnight, NanHui's real estate property price has gone up by RMB 1,000 per square meter. Will be higher still.

2) To stimulate shopping, from this Friday onward, the duty free shop here in town will allow Shanghai residents with valid proof to shop there within 180 days after returning from out of country travel. Wow...

3) This poor kid fell from his bike and a tree branch puncture his skull all the way to the brain stem. And to top off, the tree branch slipped as it went inside.



He lived after 8 hours of surgery. But that was after 20+ hours of consultation.

4) Another kid will die of brain cancer because this black market client charged RMB 50.00 for brain operation to remove the tumour. It failed. The cancerous cells spread. RMB 50.00!!! That was not even CAD 10.00.

We see light!

After almost 4 months of being wrapped up in our apartment, we are free!!! Since 7am this morning, we are being unwrapped. And the speed it is taking to unwrap is like Warp speed. I like it! I can now attempt to open the windows. "Attempt" is the operative word. When these guys do painting, they just paint over; when the paint dried, things got stuck. We'll see how our window open experience will go.

The dead costs money too...

It's not the taxes or liquidation of assets that cost money after a person passed away; it was the Chinese traditional ceremonies and all those related funeral needs and cemetery needs. As last count, here is a list all in Macau currency (MOP):

1) 54,000 for the funeral home usage, make-up, dress, paper offerings (from purse to car to house to maids), coffin, 3 tables of vegetarian meals at the funeral home, transportation to crematorium in Zhuhai, China; then there was the injection and the licence to transport the body, the usage of the hospital morgue, every single thing you can thing of, cost money. And that's a complete package.

2) 90,000 for a plague to be placed in the temple so the "children" do need to visit the tomb to pay respect. That is a discount.

3) 4,500 for the meal after the funeral was done. Small potatoes compared to the other expenses.

4) 39,000 to have the tomb opened to place the ashes with the husband's bones. That includes the redone of the wording on the tomb stone.

5) 25,000 the hospital stay prior to grandma's passing.

6) 35,000 for the last day of the mourning period Buddhist praying service. Cannot have 4 monks but six monks because based on the calculation on the Chinese calendar of her birth date and time as well as the death date and time, she had been sent to hell six layers deep. Need to break that six layers so grandma can head to heaven and reborn somewhere.

Other odds and ends stuff like tips to the funeral home people, the drivers for transportation of everyone (dead or alive) to Zhuhai for the cremation. The purchase of the urn, the cremation fee, etc... It comes to about 250,000 on a conservative side. The real kicker. The funeral home charged extra money, in advance, to hold the ashes for us after cremation. But the place to hold the ashes closes on Monday! And that was the day we had the cremation. Let us wonders what is going on there.

One year, 3 old people over 90's. Actually more, my great aunt passed away a month or so after my grandma, she was 102 at the time; and then the great aunt's niece died of a sudden acute stomach cancer. Discovered shortly after the great aunt passed away and she was gone six months later. So between 2008 March to now, we have buried 5 people.

One thing very interesting is that, my most recent grandma's passaway date is one day shy of my other grandma (dad's side).

Stories from the 110K ride

We passed thru Sheshan where Le Meridien has a really nice spot. Unfortunately, getting to there is way too congested now compared to when I first arrived! Whoever is the developer of this area, now they are building an amusement park with roller coaster, more villas and more bloody crazy bus drivers to take passenger from all areas of Shanghai to SheShan. And these drivers do not care about safety. Just cruise at highspeed. Then there were out of town tourists in their cars driving up. Very congested. This area is also the HSBC sponsored PGA golf stop. Everywhere is grand except the road leading to those places. Think of Wascana parkway, the road width with bi-directional traffic with buses and cars non-stop. We almost got nailed couple times. Last time, Audrey got forced off the road by a bus in front of Le Meridien. Umm... why are we keep going there?

Then passed Le Meridien, the road was really smooth. 35K outside of downtown Shanghai we are still under Shanghai Mini-gov't control. And I saw lots of buildings being built; huge ones. And of course migrant workers working... Not sure who would be living in those far flung places. Just before the Le Meridien, there was an Australian villa project. Now Phase 2 is completed. From the look while we cycled, Phase 1 had not many people moved in. I counted 4.

Have no idea where all the money in Shanghai has come from; but we passed a race track. It offered drivers to race with their own cars; Porche, Audi R8, Nissan GT-R, Mini, I saw every walk of fast cars with young kids driving! No older than 30 years old. I had a chat with a Assistant GM at a Macau bank last week, she said it is scary how much money mainlanders are bringing in to deposit. She has seen all sorts. And some were so suspicious, she had to turn them away.

I saw real estate developments everywhere but how much is enough? There will be a point that things will be a bubble. A friend of mine told me on Saturday that lots of hair stylist places with over 100 franchise stores in Shanghai have closed at least 40 to 50 of them since last Fall.

The Central gov't has enacted a law to mandate local gov'ts to report "true" economic statistics.

110Km Later

Yes, we rode 110Km today against the wind most of the way. My butts are sore, two thigh cramps, and learning the Chinese driving/riding skills.

Good that I finally took my new bike out and broke it in. Did a maiden voyage two mornings ago at 5am. You know, tried to make sure the clips on my shoes worked along with the over bike performance. For the obvious reason, I felt with the clips securely locking my feet in place on the pedals. Needless to say, I have been sore since then. Now my butts. Good thing I decided replacing the clip pedals with the normal pedals. The bike rode great. I probably would have gotten more power out of the clips but with city traffic and crazy idiots on the road, clips would be very dangerous. A road racing bike configuration is NOT good for Shanghai city riding.

We left toward She Shan (佘山）direction at 6am; arrived there around 730am. Then my iron-wife wanted to take me to her usual noodle hangout place. It was 15Km passed She Shan. What? We got there by 9:15am. Sat down and ordered. The noodle shop was one that offered hand-made noodle (look under Lanzhou Beef Noodles); the noodle was made fresh from dough when one ordered. Man, it was good! And cheap! All those fancy hand work in Cantonese restaurants and charged a lot for the same made of noodles. The total cost for b'fast came to RMB 18.00 (CAD 3.50 or so). Two big bowls of bottomless noodles and a eggs and tomato dish.

Back to the bike, it glided so well. But on most of the roads we were on, I felt like I was sitting in a Ferrari sports car and feeling every bumps on my already sore butts.

There were lots to report during this trip. Will break up the story for easy ready.